Saturday, July 27, 2013

When I went to flash my rooted but stock Nexus 7 with Android 4.3, the update was failing because the /system/bin/debuggerd was not the version it expected. This is apparently because stickmount does some tricky stuff with debuggerd in order to work. You get an error like this: "assert failed: apply_patch_check("/system/bin/debuggerd","1ed6f..."

I was able to fix this and get 4.3 installed. Since I couldn't find a walkthrough for this, here's what I pieced together in case others have the same problem.

First, you need the right debuggerd file. For the 4.3 update (coming from 4.2.2), you can get a copy from this XDA thread (post #4 by tiggggr).

Now to get it in the right place. There are a few ways to do this. I used adb but it can probably be done with most file explorer apps. First copy the debuggerd.rename.zip you downloaded onto your device somewhere:

adb push debuggerd.rename.zip /sdcard/debuggerd-4.2.2

Then you need to be able to write to the system partition, stop the debuggerd, make a backup if you want, then copy the file:

I already had a backup copy of debuggerd in my /system/bin and you can see that now debuggerd has the right sha1 hash so the install will continue.

I had to do a similar thing to restore my build.prop from a backup on my device:

root@android:/system # cp /mnt/shell/emulated/0/build.prop.bak build.prop
[Update] Here is a copy of my build.prop that matches what the install script expects: build.propshell@grouper:/mnt/shell/emulated/0 $ sha1sum build*48f7593c2ff2fa85a147639fd7b77c3bc0607249 build.prop.bak
Now to get root back...
[Update]
Getting root back on my Nexus 7 was easy enough that I didn't mention it earlier, but a few people have asked. I pieced together the steps from this Google+ post and part of this XDA thread into hopefully a clearer walkthrough, if this helps anyone. You could use TWRP instead of CWM, but CWM worked fine. Note that this is for the WiFi Nexus 7 (grouper) and there are different downloads for the GSM / 3G version (tilapia).

About Me

Hi. My name is Jon Adair and I'm a geek. This is my oft-neglected personal blog.

I'm the co-founder of Thinkamingo where we build fun and educational mobile apps. I do product planning, coding, graphic design, and marketing. I'm married with two homeschooled kids, so there's very little "free time" outside of their activities. I've been active in several ministries at Van Dyke United Methodist Church especially children's ministry. I am also a ham (AI4DG) and do disaster relief and community service volunteer work through several organizations.